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Tuesday, January 27, 2015

X-aminations in February 2015

Get ready for Ninja Psylocke, as the second avatar of 90s X-Men comics debuts in February, along with the beginning of Marvel's next annual linewide crossover, the Avengers-centric and more loosely structured "Acts of Vengeance".

As with the "Inferno" tie-ins, I'll be looking at "Acts of Vengeance" by on-sale date, so the first batch of titles is all the "AoV" titles on sale in September of 1989, and so on.

As always, sound off in the comments for anything I may have missed, particularly any "Acts of Vengeance" titles with either ties to the X-Men or which make a significant contribution to the overall storyline (bare bones it may be).

On Sale September 1989
February 4th: Uncanny X-Men #255
February 5th: New Mutants #83
February 6th: X-Factor #48

8 comments:

Is it okay to repeat that I love Acts of Vengeance as an idea to the extent that it sieves through as love for the execution also, even without having read the half of it? A part of it might be that in that fifteen-or-so stack of original US comics of mine, because of timing reasons, AoV happened to be well represented, and, as nonsensical the FF issues were, I somewhat perversedly loved seeing an endless bunch of never-seen-in-Finland villains make fools of themselves.

I just love how the sound idea of the villains switching their enemies between themselves to get an assumed advantage just should be working, but because of the conventions of the medium really just can't.

Because of contemporary reasons, I expect Daredevil vs. Ultron to be X-amined, and, as a totally unrelated contemporary crossover pointer, how awesome would it be that the upcoming Secret Wars would end with the survivors finding themselves stepping out of a structure in the Central Park and it's 1984 and nothing after the Bronze Age counts anymore? Should they now choose to go the Crisis on Infinite Multiverses route of the Distinguished Competitor, let them go all the way then.

No, wait, let's make it 2015 instead and use the first issue for bringing everyone up to date with the changes in the world and then never talk of it again after that. Except for some of the more controversial storylines the Watcher would run with a set of assorted individual heroes their now never-did-happen actions through and they'd have a chance to comment on *cough*disown*cough* them. For this the Watcher would get his own monthly book except with Cyclops there would be a supersized Special Edition, where Scott and his newlywed wife would be escorted through the whole leaving the family for returned Jean thing and Madelyne would hit him again but harder this time and then he would apologize for the things he did not do (because let's face it guys some of us have wives too) and then they would somehow get on with their marriage.

The folks brought over from Ultimateverse and elsewhere would watch from the side and shake their heads in disbelief. ALL the clone Spider-Men would be incinerated in front of everyone.

And the only Peter Parker left would then be pulled aside by Lady Death who would in very clear and definite terms tell him that death is a part of living and the greatest responsibility goes towards accepting that and if he EVER for any reason exchange even one word with Mephisto there will be hell to pay and then she would extend her finger and poke him gently on the shoulder and the symbiote costume would drop down dead in pieces and Peter would be handed an old uniform of the FF and a brown paper bag with eye holes and told to go home because that Mary Jane girl is waiting there with something very important to tell him.

@Teemu: // how awesome would it be that the upcoming Secret Wars would end with the survivors finding themselves stepping out of a structure in the Central Park and it's 1984 //

Way back in the early-to-mid '90s there was an unsuccessful pitch to Marvel editorial by some writers that went kind-of like this:

You know how the Marvel Universe has a floating timeline whereby everything since the FF's rocket going up in 1961 has happened over roughly seven years? It's seven years later now. Meaning that "now" is 1968 — or it was in all the last issues before this event. As of Jump Month it's really now, some three dozen years after the FF's rocket went up in 1961, and the status quo is whatever we want it to be as we slowly reveal what's happened in the Marvel Universe since we last saw everyone and everything in 1968. The present date was mentioned on-panel over the years, sure, but that goes for issues published in 1967 as much as issues published in 1984, so instead of disregarding the former and floating the timeline forward we're disregarding the latter and collapsing it backward. All the technological advances portrayed in the comics, everyday stuff as well as the science-fiction gizmos, hold because the Marvel Universe advanced more rapidly.

It was kind-of like DC's One Year Later after Infinite Crisis except it would've been Twenty-Seven Years Later. We could've had this crazy go-for-broke move by Marvel to shake things up, but instead we got Avengers: The Crossing, Onslaught, and Heroes Reborn.

I don't want to make it sound as if it had been at all likely, by the way. The pitch didn't even get as far as the infamous Waid/Peyer/Morrisson/Millar Superman proposal to DC. It had just recently been broached in still-gestational form and shot down, I think, when I spoke to one of the writers involved; shot down at what level, I don't know either.

Thank you for that, Blam. That's pretty much how I as a reader have to have addressed the sliding timescale thing really, because I can't distance for example Punisher or Forge from the Vietnam war background and pretend it was the Gulf war instead and the demonstrations and stuff in the classic Spider-Man are oh so sixties.

Of course, for even the nineties Marvel the Infinite Crisis approach would have been untenable, because as opposed to what package DC got rid of in their housecleaning, the Silver/early Bronze Age Marvel has all those classics with Galactus coming, Kree/Skrull war etc. that getting rid of which would make everything pointless. Retconning away the 90's, then again... yes, lovable nostalgia there too for us, but perhaps not something we would not appreciate as having happened in a parallel universe.

I have certain animosity towards the cinematic universe (though agent Coulson's gang is really doing their best to win me over), and it's to a large extent because of being weary of the side-reboots of HEROES REBORN and the ULTIMATE line kind because when they keep stacking those up it's an admission that yeah, we can't think for a direction for all this either so we'll just keep doing the old stories again but in cool 90's/00's sort of way.

@Teemu: Is it okay to repeat that I love Acts of Vengeance as an idea to the extent that it sieves through as love for the execution also, even without having read the half of it?

"Acts of Vengeance" is one of those storylines where I really like the idea, but not so much the execution, because there really is no main narrative. Even in the Avengers books, it feels like we're missing issues detailing the "main" story.

But the overall concept is great, and there's a bunch of really fun tie-ins as a result. It just feels like the whole thing is tie-in with no main story to connect it.

That's kind of the reason why I felt the need to say my love sieves through for the execution also, because I'm somewhat aware of the lacking backbone of the event. But then again, with that an idea like that I find some refreshing honesty in that they kind of shamelessly own up it's really only a device to make hithertoforth uneachknowing heroes and villains fight each other, and I feel that releasing a four-part AoV limited edition of the prime movers pushing each other at their secret lair wouldn't have had made any further contribution to anything expect to Marvel cash flow.